This is not a travelogue, I live here, a small town, on a small island, in the middle of the Irish Sea. Welcome to The Isle of Man.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

YOU LOOKING AT ME?- CRITTERS

Last week I had the badly titled pun "duck close and personal" which could have been this one really too. Ah well never mind. So many of you were able to name the ugly duck after I asked for help last week as a Muscovy. All I knew was he just looked so weird with his bright white feathers and knobbly red beak. As Wilma put is (Mrs Nesbitts dog, no really) the duck looked like he had be playing with his mama's lipstick.

Well even I can tell you this Manx duck giving me the evil eye is a Mallard. Mallards are around the world, just this one has a Manx passport. Actually he was quite sweet. I like ducks to photograph. They just waddle towards you begging for their image to be snapped. Even better if you have a bag of bread, you can get an open beak shot, or a mad flapping group shot.

This shot was taken by the harbour under the bridge, the image yesterday. It's a crop of a cropped image. I am updating my library shots and was playing around with this duck shot as I found the whole image a little boring. Obviously that's why it's never been used. His eye caught my eye, so that's how the image came to be. Sometimes less is more with an image. Not to every one's taste but I confess to not having an image ready as I have been busy on another photographic project. Yippee it finished today though.

Thanks for the advice re those pesky emails. I've now got the junk mail filter enabled and a safe list. So that should dump the crappy ones. I don't really want to change the comments box though. I know it's more sensible to enable the censor so I can dump the rubbish before they go on, but I just don't like the idea of not letting people have their say. I will just keep an eye on it and dump the swearing ones. See how it goes.

John K. It's funny how you enjoy the ranting posts better than the nice ones. It seems you are not alone. In fact I get more feedback and requests for those kind than any other post. Sure some of you out there aren't just winding me up so I post a rant! Naughty.

For more wonderful camera critters see MISTY DAWN Camera critters and be sure to leave a nice comment for Misty' s own oustanding posts.

Interesting duckformation. Love the picture too and the bridge in the last post is fantastic!You asked how I came up with Sky Watch. I tried to think of something that would be easy for ANY one to take a picture of. We don't all have flowers, pets, bridges, etc but most all of us can take pictures of the sky.

Digging De Niro duck. Which lens do you use to get a shot sharp like this? Hey, stay cool. I saw the cussing. Not American. We don't use that kind of cussing. Thought you Brits were polite! You know what they say. Them that can do those that can't bug bloggers. You rant'n'rave it's cool.

When I first saw this in the portal, I thought it was a geisha in a distorting mirror! I had to stare for quite a few seconds before that second sight thing clicked in and I realised that the lower holes were nose and not eye. Stay off the red wine, Julie ...

The sad thing about this image is that it puts the kybosh on one I have scheduled for this coming Thursday which is a eye-up of a Pacific Black Duck. Might still let it out for a run - mine was as-was: no cropping, no nothing.

That shot is truly great babooshka! I hope I can do a close up shot with an animal to! jajajaja God Bless you and thanks for still patronizing my blog even after a long period of no posts! Thanks so much and God Bless yoU!

I really like the cropping here. I wouldn't have recognized it as a Mallard without seeing the colour as I am not that good at recognizing ducks without the bird book at hand. I did think this would be what Daffy Duck might have been modeled from though!

I used to work as a graphic designer and discovered that creative cropping does wonders for the most photos. About the only kind of photo resistant to cropping is a head-on firing line group shot where everyone has to be included.

you have a very interesting blog as well as your site, i've visited it already. wonderful photos! i'm new to blogging & photography though i'm very much into arts. i paint & i love painting. i'm trying my hand on photography but still hurdles to getting good results. and i'm enjoying it so much.

Good one - and works well in B/W!And for those spammers - they are jerks, that probably have no life, still live at their parents at age 28, and of course don't get any...The day will come that they can be tracked down, identified and persecuted - regardless where they are.Cheers, Klaus

The warning about bread is given here in Australia for our Rainbow Lorikeets that are honey-eaters and humans offer them a mix of bread and sugar. We are advised to replace this with a commercially prepared seed mix that is sweet. By overfeeding them the bread/sugar mix we also make it hard for them to survive in their wild state.